


the last sweet days

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: 15 years and several wars later, they're in a bar again.
Relationships: Guinan/Ro Laren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21
Collections: Rare Pairs Exchange 2020





	the last sweet days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beatrice_Otter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Otter/gifts).



The nature of time and memory was that every so often one ended up living the same day again. In the past Guinan had been through days where she couldn't name was year it was, certain that she was in memory but then turning around and finding that no one around her remembered that bit of unshared past. Memory, it was, that led her astray so often, since El-Aurians lived a long time precisely so they could collect them. Bartending had been an intentional choice, relying on the loose tongues of patrons to build up her stores of stories. Even those people and places who were gone had their stories. No one could mourn what they did not remember. 

  
On the day that Guinan felt she was living over Ro Laren walked into a bar. Guinan's bar, to be clear, and the only bar on the Enterprise-E. A reputable place, clean and well-lit in a way that tried not to call attention to its own luminosity. Picard had asked her a second time to come aboard the new ship, and although he'd been promoted to admiral in the time since she stuck around. Stories were what she was looking for.

When Ro Laren sat down a flash of recognition passed over her face. It was familiar to Guinan, who often met the same people over and over again while travelling, but in this case Laren quickly pushed the recognition aside in favor of the blank neutral expression she usually favored.

"One synthale, with a cherry and a fizz slice, please." She was speaking in DMZ Pidgin, although her regional accent bled through on the Bajoran words. 

"Long time no see." 

Laren didn't take the hook. "And the same to you. I didn't know you were still serving Starfleet."

"Jean-Luc asked before his promotion. It's a living."

She set the drink on the bar top and leaned on her hand, choosing a more neutral face instead of her typical enigmatic half smile. The former indicated interest in Laren's world, the later was the expression of a Cardassian operative as he explained that Ro Gale never lived in the Valo II camps. Such a lie is abhorrent to El-Aurains, and is why Guinan never spent any of her years in Cardassia after the 2040s. 

"I didn't ask to come back," Laren said after a long pause. "After the Dominion attacked, I fought for Bajor. They made me a Lieutenant after the Battle of Delta Pyxidis. Did you hear about that, Guinan?"

"Tell me."

She had heard of it, from her few remaining kin who'd sat on the edges of the war and the wormhole. Let the names of the dead not be forgotten, as they said in the Halls of Memory before the destruction of her homeworld.

"Seven squadrons of seven soldiers and their commander flew in. Six soldiers flew back."

"May the Prophets keep them."

"That's a very old blessing. Hardly anyone uses it anymore."

"It's been a while since I've been on Bajor. Do they still have the gardens at Beldol Arca?"

"Burned during the Occupation." Laren's teeth cut through a fizzy slice; it crackles and pops like hot grease. "They rebuilt the old brick arboretum. Vedek Nerys lives there. After the war we lost her to the service of the Prophets."

"Lost, or perhaps on a new path?"

"Before she joined the temple, she saw the Bajoran military merge with Starfleet. I went from a war hero to a traitor. They gave me a uniform and stationed me in the Beta Quadrant. I fought for my homeland, and I was sent away. It's like they never learned. Fifteen years, and when I made it to the base my CO called me Lieutenant Laren."

"The bigger the group, the slower the change. Starfleet made many more promises to the Bajorans than they could reliably keep."

"And we had to pay for it."

She drained her glass and clinked the ice cubes. Guinan let her ruminate for a minute, turned her back and attended to the other patrons. The lights were dimming all across the ship in preparation for the night shift, a time during which Guinan closed her bar and went to her quarters to pretend to sleep. El-Aurians never slept; they remembered, rolling back through centuries of memories to ensure it was all in place. 

Strictly speaking, it was not necessary every night, and so she laid a hand next to Laren's on the slick surface of the bar.

"I'm rooming on the civilian deck. 19C."

Laren's eyes cut to the side and she gave a small, quick nod.

Not long after Guinan made it back to her room and removed her had there was a chime at the door. Laren was still in uniform, straight backed and stiff.

"I'm not your commanding officer."

Laren stepped inside and dropped her shoulders. "It's been a while. No time during a war, and I've done nothing but war my entire life."

"At some point you learn how to find partners during it."

"Oh, I didn't-" She gestures, softly. "I don't think I'm up for that today. I came to hear you talk."

"You're the first person who's ever come to me for that. Most want me to listen. It's in the job description."

They sat on the couch in her front room, Laren still maintaining the uneasy distance that Guinan had seen on so many children of war.

"When you showed me how children have fun," Laren began, "that was the first time I'd ever understood why people look back on their childhood fondly. Vedek Nerys told me I was rootless because I didn't know how to give up fighting, but I wanted to tell her that I did know, once. And I want to know again."

"You want to hear a story."

"Anything. I've never had a conversation where I didn't speak on fear and pain. But you've seen so much more."

Her eyes glowed with a hopefulness that Guinan had never seen in them. Talk, she wanted? Well, Guinan had been listening for a very long time, and she had more stories saved up than the day was long. For memory was easiest as a group effort, a hundred mouths to chant the names of the dead, a thousand minds to keep the flame alight. Remembering, and then remembering through the act of repeating. 

The heaviest stories of her homeworld, of destruction and exile, could be repeated another day. For now it was best to have a simple recollection, something light and old and well worn in the telling.

"This is a story from my childhood, about my uncle, Terkim, and the time he claimed to have slain a Tarcassian razor beast..."


End file.
